Road Non-sense

Yesterday while attempting to cross a road, I realized that the cars which were waiting at the red light were revving up their engines even before the light turned green. I had not crossed the road when the desperate drivers started driving ahead as soon as the light had turned green. I was somewhere in the middle of the zebra crossing when a bike rider sped from in front of me. Another SUV whizzed past me from just behind me. The next thing I know, that even before I had reached the pavement, cars were rushing all around me. Luckily I was not run over, but I had cars running al around me. Why is the average Indian driver desperate to speed ahead? I don’t think all of them are running late for work, besides all this happened in the evening, so I guess majority of them were basically driving to home. So why are they always in such a hurry? I drive sometimes, but never with the desperate need to run over a pedestrian.

Another thing that I noticed is, in the last one week, I have witnessed at least one accident every day of the last one week. The accidents vary in intensity, degree of damage, location etc. but yes accidents everyday. I won’t be surprise d if the police brought out a report informing that the number of accidents is on the rise. Well if people are so desperate to rush to their destination, then the accidents are bound to happen.

I carpool with someone from work (well not exactly pool, but depend), anyway, today a reckless bike rider hit the car and rushed away. He didn’t even bother to stop. A few days back a minivan driver driving a commercial vehicle rammed a colleague’s car from the read. The impact was forceful enough to leave a huge dent in the rear of the car of that colleague. Both the car drivers got out of their cars to discuss, but the minivan driver rushed away the moment he got a chance. Of course he had to. He was driving a cab. The driver probably had no intention of sticking around till the police came. My colleague though complained to the police, but is not hopeful for any damage compensation from the cab company. Why should he? The way road accidents and road rage goes in India, the police have too much on their plate to even bother to look for reckless drivers who have only caused minor damages. The police might not bother unless there has been some death in the accident, or may be some hot shot politician/business man with links starts pulling strings. The police won’t bother unless the car is a luxury car and the car owner is adamant about getting the compensation.

The roads of India (even in the best of the cities) do not have proper zebra crossings, proper traffic signals. Forget the surveillance cameras that the Americans and Europeans have along their roads, our roads don’t even have proper directions. It is sad that even after over 60 years of independence and after having among the highest rates of development in the word (we stood next to china at close to 8.5%); we are still laid back, unconcerned about lives of others, at least on road, and will probably be know as the reckless Indians for along time.

Should I have learned the way of road life here? Should I have started driving recklessly like those who almost ran over me yesterday? Earlier I used to drive with good traffic sense, and used to be concerned about other people on the road. But I think I need not anymore.

The Raging media monster

We all talk about how the media has brought to light so many of the ignored activities today. We are reminded of the sting operations; we are reminded of the aggressive journalism. But within all this we are missing out on the fact that media as on today for what so ever reasons has crossed boundaries of decency. And do not forget that the Paparazzi also call themselves as a part of the media (I don’t think they display attributes of a journalist) chasing Celebrities and choking them to the limit, defying every courtesy of decency. There is more to add to all this, today in case of some unfortunate event, a family may be devastated and these so called media persons hound the victim or the family day and night, with the excuse of covering the misery of the person. If you ask the journalist if he is doing the right thing by pounding a grieving mother, they would say that it’s all a part of showing the nation, the plight of this woman.

In which ever case we refer to, we realize that the media/journalists pursue the families to victims seeking their comments on the unfortunate circumstances. This has led to the obvious rise in TV viewership because no one would want to ignore the plight of the victims if it's on television. During the 26/11 attack, there were certain newspersons who "accidently" mentioned the location of people in hiding in the hotels leading some terrorists to those people. Needless to say that the media seriously compromised the security of innocent civilians by showing the news clips on air. Why is the media so irresponsible?

The media has taken over the charge of being a pseudo judge. Any small or big event occurs and they are rushing to pronounce their judgment tagging along people who are jobless enough to comments on any and every issue.

There are some news channels which are no better than horrible family dramas. News channels like India-TV and Star News focus on useless pieces of news (pardon me, such pieces of information do not even qualify to being called news). The news anchors on these shows are probably former drama actors who have been thrown out of Television serials for absurd overacting. These so called news readers describe any and every incident in such a way that it may sound just like the annihilation of earth Do these channels realize that they are making a mockery out of themselves, everyday?



Let me give you an example. A typical dialogue on India-TV or Star News would go like this:-

"dil ke mareez aur bachche yeh khabar na dekhein to achcha rahega. yeh aise dil dehlane wali khabar hai jo bade badon ko hila de. Ek chotte se saanp ka aatankh gaon mein faila hua hai. Jee haan aapne sahi suna…… "



These kinds of statements are common on India-TV and it reflects how much hype the media creates about small pieces of news (again not all their news pieces are worth neing called news pieces). Considering the competitive environment the journalists are expected to get juicier, spicy and dramatic news items. But instead of presenting us with news, these channels simply choose to present crap.

The story is similar with newspapers. A look at the popular news papers such as Hindustan Times or Times of India will reflect the poor quality of news items. Often the same piece of news item is repeated multiple number of times. These papers often focus a lot on gossip news. They supplement their papers with add-ons like the Delhi Times or the HT city which happen to cover all the talk of the town. And guess what, they are simply catering to the On the other hand the not so popular newspapers such as Indian Express publish sensible pieces of news. They present relevant data. They have better editorials, and they don’t fill up your bundle of paper with gossip news about who has an affair with whom, who wears what etc.

I don’t intend to look down upon the so called popular news papers, but they just happen to cater to what the public wants. The taste of people in serious news is a rare find today. Those who are only interested in news and not junk information happen to read papers like the Indian Express or the Hindu. I don’t have anything against these popular news papers, nor do I gain anything by promoting the other papers. I just happen to express my opinion on the quality and quantity of news we receive today.

eternal actresses

Today i saw a particular actress who i used to really love. She then virtually disappeared from the cinema world. The actress had done wonders and had a huge fan following. Today i saw this actress judging a dance show on television. This actress came down on stage for a short dance performance. And i think she looked so graceful, beautiful, more that ever before, that i fell in love with her again. This awesome actress has blended in her role better than any other actress that i have seen in the world of ever changing bollywood. This actress is so versatile that you throw anything at her and she handles the sold with grace. She will surpass your expectations, she will enjoy her role, and then one day tell the world that she had a great time doing that. There can be no one better than her. I have seen so many new generation actresses, but few come close to her. I wont say that i have seen all her movies because i have seen very few of her movies. Unfortunately i have not got the chance to watch all her movies, but if i do, i will not let go of the opportunity. I remember her role is movies like QAYAMAT SE QAYAMAT TAK, YES BOSS, ONE TWO KA FOUR (which was nothing short of awesome), JHOOTH BOLE KAUWA KATE (pardon my spelling, but I am sure i have spelt it wrong) her short role in a movie recently released, LUCK BY CHANCE. There is just one thing i would appeal to her, please come back to the movies because i think she is among those few actresses who bring colour to even the stupidly made movies. The movie era of JUHI CHAWLA may be gone, But she can now be seen judging a famous dance competition on television. The only other place where we may notice her now would be the KURKURE advertisement. I do hope that we get to see her more on televison or the big screen.

Journey for some, a trip for many.

This place is among the holiest places for a Hindu devotee. People say that unless God does not ask, you cannot go and visit the shrine. Here is my experience...
The famous shrine of Vaishnodevi witnesses the arrival of close to 60000 pilgrims per day during peak seasons. During non real seasons, the number is 25000. The one thing that even a novice would notice is the level of organization here. Almost everything here is planned properly. And though because of the number of pilgrims who pay a visit to the shine is close to 60,000 a day, the team of people handling the crowd does a fantastic job. Another noticeable thing would be the army presence. Due to the rouge state of Pakistan as a neighbor, the army needs to be over cautious. Our driver mentioned that thanks to the presence of the military they feel safe, relatively of course.
For visiting the shrine, the devotees are supposed to trek up a 11KM path which is a gentle slope up to the shrine. During our trek up for the shrine, we had to dodge heavy traffic (yes you read it correct, traffic on a path where only pedestrians are allowed). There was too much horse power on the trek path. No I am not talking about SUVs, or Jeeps. I am talking about dodging horses carrying those with some form of physical challenges or simply those who are too lazy. Of course where ever you find loads of horses, you also find loads of horse shit. Dodging piles of those was also a bit of a pain. Trust me you don’t wanna know more about this.
But the almost 8 hour trek didn’t appear monotonous at all. We joked around, stopped a lot to grad a snack talked a lot about a lot of things. Something that I had not done with my family for ages, and yes, made fun of others who were riding on a horse and couldn’t really handle it. It was good to know your family after such a long time.
Once at the top, we looked around for our accommodation, and thanks to some friend of my dad’s we were quickly able to get something. We had a bath and after an hour, went for the Darshan. For visiting the shrine, we are supposed to take off our footwear and stand in a queue for paying our respect to the shrine. It was frigid cold. My feet went numb, and soon after they were so cold that they were hurting me as if a huge rock has fallen on my feet.
After about ten minutes in the queue, our turn came and we simply paid our respect to the shrine to which we owed a visit for close to 15 years. At last, it was done. Thankfully everything went smoothly. Our stay was comfortable, all along the time, we had decent food, we had a timely visit and everyone was happy. And my mother promised to be back soon.
The next day we had to start for the return journey. Again, the same thing of stopping at numerous places, grabbing a bite, but what we noticed was that another peak about 50KM away was snow cover. No wonder the freakin chill last night. The sight was just awesome. But unfortunately the expanse of the whole thing could not be captured on a camera. What we captured could never reflect the true picture of what we saw.

Traffic priority

normally i hate traveling in the auto rickshaw. basically i hate the part when the auto rickshaw guy cheats us and tries to fleece us and drives around rashly.
but today i was happy i did. because i realized that even today there are sensible Indians alive.
while on my way to IIT-Delhi, i had hired an auto rickshaw and that guy simply asked the just price. this guy who was about 60, turned out to be an honest person, because from my experience, the older drivers are often rude and stubborn, and end up being the cheats. on the way, there was a fire brigade rushing to someplace. this auto driver was among the few people who actually bothered to give way to the fire brigade. i noticed that a lot of drivers just grabbed the opportunity to cut tight corners, partly blocking the path in front of the fire brigade. i was really furious, but i noticed that this auto driver did his best to avoid blocking the road in front of the fire brigade. when i asked him why, he simply said, that it is the basic decent thing to do. he also told me, that when he was young, a driving test that he took for the first time had a question.
the question went like this,who gets a priority over a traffic situation. define the order of priority from high to low:
the president's motorcade, the fire brigade, an ambulance.
the answer was: fire brigade gets the highest, followed by ambulance, and then the president's motorcade.
I hope this question should be answered by each and every Indian.

What can we do? A follow up to the Mumbai terror attacks

A few weeks before the Mumbai terror attacks took place, I had seen a movie, 'A Wednesday'. Actually I have seen the movie three times by now. For those of you who have not seen the movie or even heard of it, the protagonist is a common man who takes things into his own hands in order to prove to the terrorists that 'enough is enough'. The protagonist who had lost friends in Mumbai train bombings, is saddened by the in activeness of the police, and the political system. In an attempt to bring them to senses, he threatens to blow up bombs at various locations in Mumbai. Only he had not planted any bombs. His only demand was the release of four terrorists, who he intended to kill. In the end he is able to have all the four terrorist killed and even get away after his act.
Sometimes I wonder, "If things really go bad, could I see myself in the shoes of the protagonist?"
I do not know if I have the strength to do what he had done in the movie. I would say to myself, "It is just a movie. It CANNOT be true." And then again, I feel (or rather should I say fear), " can someone be pushed to that level to do such a thing". I do not know. But I know one thing for sure, what happened in Mumbai on the 26Th of November 2008, was the greatest terror strike we have ever faced and hopefully it has awakened the people.
Sine the terror strike took place, there have been blame games going on. One intelligence agency blaming the other. One political party throwing dirt over the other. There have been scape goats in this. People who had to take a fall for things that were not foreseen. I am not defending any politician or any agency. I am not defending any party or supporting anyone. My only support and sympathies lie with the people of Mumbai. My only expectation is that we as citizens of this country are able to do something(I do not know what, but I soon will). My only hope is that next time onwards the security agencies are able to defend this nation from terrorists.
I had read in one of the major newspapers, that in the USA, all the intelligence agencies report to one organization(I do not remember which one). The article also said, that this system leads to a lot of chaos. But this also ensures proper channelization of information. There is no inter agency conflict. And if there is any, it is resolved by the one department. The same article also read, that the simple fact that the USA has not been hit by any terrorists after September 11, is proof in itself that a system like that can work, where all the intelligence agencies can converge information to a single department.
A lot of newspaper articles appearing after the Mumbai attacks blamed our politicians for acting sloppy, or not carrying out themselves properly. People were saying that , the arrival of the politicians only burdened the local police. The arrival of the politicians required the police to divert manpower to the security of the politicians. I say that by appearing in public, at the site of the attacks, the politicians were probably trying to show solidarity to the people. In the USA, if a terror attacks takes place, the president is moved to a safe bunker, probably below the white house. I am sure that even Manmohan Singh's security would be strong, but he chose not to hide. Again, I am not supporting any political figure(I actually hate majority of the politicians) , I just want to thank everyone who tried to help(at least tried!! I have not even lit a candle yet in order to pay homage to the terror victims).
In one of the articles in the newspaper, I read that New Delhi was among the cities which showed the least emotional reaction to the tragedy. I hope we as Delhiites are able to respond better.

God......am i a theist now?

A particular thing that has always been a topic of debate or conflict within me is about being an atheist or a theist. I always used to hate god. Used to claim that he does not exist cause if he did, there would not be so much injustice in this world. But for a year now, i feel that god does exist. Though y opinion about the injustice in the world has not changed. I still feel that there is a lot of injustice. But now I feel that may be god has his way. May be he has something in store for me and everyone else. May be he has some elaborate plan and he does everything according to that plan. What ever happens, happens according to that plan. I don't know if god exists, but I would like to believe he does. I was an atheist. Now i am not. I am a theist now. But i don't follow any specific religion. I was born in a Hindu family. I go to temples, I sometimes go to a church too. But for me , god doesn't have a form. I have not given up non vegetarian food items. I still have the same old habits. the only difference is, I don't curse god every time. I say," God, what do you have in mind? If you have given me some trouble today, please help me out tomorrow." I always have a hope. Earlier I used to just get angry with the chain of events. now I do get disappointed but i don't lose hope. I still complain to god. But I don't curse him. I used to earlier. I am not a god fearing man. I am just a god believing man. I used to be a god hating man earlier. I do not think I have any regrets, I just think that if god is watching, he would make everything alright in the end.
I do get disappointed with thing that I don't like or with the outcomes of various other things whee I had my hopes set high, but I try to convince myself that in the everything is gonna be alright. I would love to believe it, but at time I wonder again,"does god actually exist or am I just trying to console myself with some stupid notion?
Right now, I am a bit upset. A lot has happened in the last few days to disappoint me. But I have not yet started cursing god. I hope things don't get worse. Had all this been happening a year back, I would have probably cursed god, blamed the whole world for something. Hated myself and maybe gone into solitude for sometime. I am no doing that and I hope I don't end up doing it either.